Punk legend: Vivienne Westwood tells her story

LONDON (AFP) – Grande dame of fashion, co-founder of punk, outspoken campaigner – Vivienne Westwood has seen it all. But at 73, she wants to set the record straight.

The British designer’s authorised biography, published this week, gives her take on life with legendary Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, who died in 2010.

“Vivienne Westwood” catalogues their dysfunctional relationship and creative partnership which, in the 1970s, helped shape the look and sound of the punk movement.

Using her own words and contributions by friends and family, biographer Ian Kelly charts how Westwood turned from revolutionary into the founder of a global fashion house.

Her eye for a striking image is a recurring theme but so too is her childlike enthusiasm, some would say fanaticism, for new ideas and social action through art.

Westwood continues to work full-time in fashion, aided by her second husband Andreas Kronthaler, who she met in 1989 when he was 23 and she was 48.

A file picture taken on August 16, 2013, shows British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood demon-strating at the gates of the drill site operated by Cuadrilla Resources Ltd in Balcombe in southern England. Grande dame of fashion, co-founder of punk, outspoken campaigner – Vivienne Westwood has seen it all. But at 73, she wants to set the record straight. The British designer’s authorised biog-raphy, published this week, gives her take on life with legendary Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, who died in 2010. – AFP

But she increasingly uses her wealth and public platform for her political and environmental campaigns.

“Ideas make me happy,” she said.

Westwood’s legend began with McLaren, who she met in 1965 when she was 25 and he was 20.

In 1971 they opened their shop at 430 King’s Road, “Let It Rock”, later “SEX”, a scandalous source of fetish wear and strange new looks that attracted everyone from Chrissie Hynde to Iggy Pop, Adam Ant, Jerry Hall and Charles Saatchi.

It was from the shop that McLaren put together the Sex Pistols, the band which gave voice to Britain’s disenchanted youth and which rocked the establishment with the release of “God Save the Queen” in 1977.

Punk is still known as much for its look – the ripped t-shirts, printed slogans and spiky hair – as its music.

The book argues that Westwood should take most of the credit for this, designing the clothes and sewing them herself in their flat in Clapham, south London.

But for years she lived in the shadow of her partner, who once described her as his “seamstress”.

McLaren “had this thing where he couldn’t leave the flat until he’d done that, until he had made me cry”, Westwood recalled.

She said that sometimes it was “simpler to give in, to give way to the tears so he would stop. Real tears have never come back for me”.

Asked why she stayed in the relationship, which occasionally turned violent, Westwood said simply: “I liked his ideas, and the journey of discovery he was on I wanted to join.”

Eventually his temper and his jealousy became boring – as did the seemingly unchannelled rage behind the “Sex Pistols”.

“When I turned around, on the barricades, there was no one there. That was how it felt. That they were just still going. So I lost interest,” Westwood recalled.